The book that the narrator and Luo receive from Four Eyes, Balzac's Ursule Mirouet, changes their lives on the mountain significantly. How?
Much of the novel is devoted to demonstrating the way that books can enrich the minds of those who read them. The narrator develops a personal philosophy because of what he reads, and the Little Chinese Seamstress gains the courage to change her life from Balzac's work. However, Dai also pays homage to the art of story-telling in any form. Even when they are recounting the maudlin propaganda story of The Little Flower-Seller, Luo and the narrator enrich the lives of their audience through their entertaining performances. Likewise, the narrator gets pleasure from adding his own embellishments to the novels he reads aloud to the Little Seamstress. Dai shows that the art of telling stories is as legitimate as the art of writing them – especially in a community where many are illiterate and hence desperate for that kind of stimulus.
